the
cottoncrest
curse
the
cottoncrest
curse
A NOVEL
Michael H. Rubin
LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BATON ROUGE
Published by Louisiana State University Press
Copyright © 2014 by Michael H. Rubin
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing
Designer: Laura Roubique Gleason
Typeface: Whitman
Printer and binder: Maple Press
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Rubin, Michael H., 1950–
The Cottoncrest curse : a novel / Michael H. Rubin.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-8071-5618-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8071-5619-3 (pdf) — ISBN 978-0-8071-5620-9 (epub) — ISBN 978-0-8071-5621-6 (mobi) 1. Curses—Fiction. 2. Prophecies—Fiction. 3. Historic buildings—Louisiana— Fiction. 4. Murder—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3618.U297C68 2014
813'.6—dc23
2013041472
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
To Ayan,
whose love, creativity, and support
make this book (and everything else) possible
Contents
Acknowledgments
PROLOGUE
PART I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
PART II
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
PART III
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
PART IV
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
PART V
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
PART VI
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
PART VII
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
PART VIII
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
PART IX
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
PART X
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
PART XI
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
PART XII
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
PART XIII
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
PART XIV
Chapter 94
Acknowledgments
Many people have given me guidance and encouragement. Marc Staen berg’s continuing enthusiasm and assistance have been invaluable, Michael Adams read early drafts of the manuscript and gave many helpful comments, and the late Les Phillabaum’s confidence in the novel buoyed me. Special thanks to Frank Maraist and Brenda Bertrand for their assistance with Cajun French phrases and to Rabbi Harold Robinson and Dr. David Ackerman, Director of the Mandel Center for Jewish Education, for their assistance with the Hebrew and Yiddish. I appreciate all of their advice, and any errors that remain, whether in En glish, French, Hebrew, or Yiddish, are purely my own.
But most of all, I cannot acknowledge enough the contributions of my wife, Ayan. She worked on and refined the characters and plot lines with me in the daily discussions we had during our many, many early-morning walks, she tirelessly edited and reedited every draft, and she devised the name of the novel. This book is the result of her efforts as much as my own.
the
cottoncrest
curse
PROLOGUE
Today
Nobody blanched as she described the gruesome event. They were captivated.
“It happened right up here,” said the docent, a thick-waisted woman in an antebellum costume complete with lace collar, crinoline skirt, and double petticoats. The tour group, which had been wilting while standing outside Cottoncrest in the intense Louisiana heat and humidity, gratefully jammed into the wide hallway that ran through the center of the massive plantation home.
The docent signaled to the tourists to follow her as she ascended the curved interior staircase. “The main house has been restored—y’all come up single file, please—has been restored to how it looked in the 1890s, when Colonel Judge Augustine Chastaine, the son of the original owner, lived here.”
The docent paused, her back to the wall, carefully avoiding an area near the banister. “This is what y’all came to see, right here. Where the most notorious murder-suicide in Louisiana occurred. One step below where I’m standing. As you come up the stairs behind me, look… but don’t walk… on these Plexiglas panels. This is where the Colonel Judge brutally slit the throat of his beautiful young wife, Rebecca, and then took his own life. Their intermingled blood soaked the wood, permanently discoloring it. Think of the tremendous amount of blood there must have been!
“But the deaths of Augustine and Rebecca Chastaine weren’t the start of the famous Cottoncrest curse. And they weren’t the end of it either.”
1893
He had just finished cutting her throat. He had done it so swiftly that she hadn’t had time to make a sound. With pleasure he had felt his long blade slice through the muscles of her neck and throat, scrape against her spine, and cut into the bone. He was still holding her from behind as her head flopped backward onto his shoulder, coating his shirt with blood.
He let her body slide onto the stairs from the landing as the blood poured out of her once-beautiful neck. Her head, held onto her body only by a bit of spine and a few shreds of flesh, fell to one side and, with a thud, hit one of the fluted white balusters that held up the handrail. Her dark hair became a sullen red sponge. Her blue dress turned crimson. The steps became bloody pools.
He paused to admire his handiwork in the blue moonlight glow that filtered in through an upper window. He
lit a match and checked his shoes to make sure there was no blood on them. His shirt was soaked with Rebecca’s blood, but his shoes were clean.
He let the knife slide from his grasp and fall beside her body. It clattered as it hit the staircase. Then he reached for his pistol.
Jenny did not dare open the door leading into the central hallway at the foot of the stairs. Although it was dark, she did not want to light a candle. Not yet. In the hallway outside the door, the glow might be seen through the gap between the bottom of the door and the wooden floor.
Her heart was pounding. She had heard the noise clearly. A gunshot.
Jenny had been at the foot of Little Miss’s bed, checking on her. Little Miss was sleeping soundly, oblivious to everything, as only the very young and very old can be when they retreat to their interior world. The gunshot did not disturb Little Miss.
Jenny pressed her ear against the door. Though she thought she had heard muffled noises after the gunshot, she could have been mistaken. There was silence now, broken only by the sound of crickets drifting in through the late-night air. It was almost as quiet as the meals that the Colonel Judge and Rebecca shared, where the only sounds were the clinking of silverware on porcelain plates. For the last few months, the Colonel Judge and Rebecca seemed to speak to each other only when absolutely necessary. They were like two wary creatures forced to coexist in the same cage.
No noise at all came from the hallway. Not the rustling of Rebecca’s white linen petticoats or the delicate clicking of her narrow shoes on the wooden floor. Not the tapping of the Colonel Judge’s cane as he limped along.
Jenny waited a good while before daring to open the door a crack. She could see no movement in the hall.
Cautiously, she moved to the foot of the stairs. She looked up toward the second-story landing. It was worse than she feared. She jammed her knuckles into her mouth. She could not allow herself to scream, although that was what she wanted to do.
In the faint fingers of moonlight that crept into the hallway through the large windows, she could see dark splotches spreading from a few steps below the landing, crawling down the stairs, and dripping over the edges.
Blood. Blood pouring from two bodies.
It was the Colonel Judge. He must have shot himself. Just like his father. But this was worse. It was not only his blood. It was Rebecca’s too. Both dead.
Jenny had no choice. She closed the door and hurried down a side passageway to the back staircase. Let Little Miss continue to sleep in her first-floor bedroom. Jenny had to reach the other two on the second floor. They would wake up soon, and if she didn’t act quickly, it would be too late.
1961
Hank Matthews sat on a lawn chair in the shade of an oak tree, near the huge sign he had erected. The words IMPEACH EARL WARREN were printed in letters five feet high, clearly visible three quarters of a mile away to all who passed up and down the highway skirting the edge of what used to be the second section of sugarcane fields.
Fucking right, Hank Matthews thought, that a Supreme Court lawsuit trying to put blacks in the classroom would be called Brown.
Brown versus Board of Education. Browns and blacks and all the other colors that weren’t white. Fuck ’em all.
Petit Rouge Parish wasn’t going to do anything different than it had been doing for the last fifty years, and no fool court was going to change that.
Washington, D.C., was far away. Things here were invisible from there.
Yet the sign next to the white mansion was not meant to be invisible. It was meant to be seen. Everyone could spot it looming above the overgrown fields sprouting spindly bull thistle and ugly Johnson grass.
Hank Matthews loved his old, rambling Cottoncrest mansion, even though it badly needed a paint job. Even though at least eleven of the forty columns that marched around the veranda were cracked and broken. Even though the front steps were sagging and the once-elegant wallpaper was turning dark with mildew. Even though weeds had long since overtaken the gardens and tendrils of poison ivy had climbed over the fences and up into the branches of the oak trees.
He had bought it to prove something. To himself. To the community. To flaunt in their faces what he had become.
He had wanted to share it all with his family. But Sylvia had died ten years ago, and his twin boys, Brett and Beau, had long since moved away. They wouldn’t talk to him. They blamed him for their mother’s death.
But that wasn’t the result of any curse. It was just damned bad luck. And you made your own luck. Made it by working hard. And now here he was, president of the Citizens’ Council and three-term member of the school board. Hell, he could be elected at the snap of his fingers to the Petit Rouge Parish Police Jury if he wanted.
He looked over with pride at the large Confederate flag hanging from the twelve-foot pole he had nailed to the frieze above the second floor. The flag told them damn fool northern meddlers that there was not going to be any meddling here. Not on his property. Not in his parish.
He knew he shouldn’t have let that big-nosed, curly-headed kid onto the property. He had had a premonition. The kid had Jew written all over him, from his horn-rimmed glasses to his fancy words to the file folder he carried under his arm. Not only Jew, but northern Jew, the worst kind. Obvious from the moment the kid had opened his mouth.
Damn. Shouldn’t have let him on the property. Shouldn’t have listened to him. Shouldn’t have let him open that folder and reveal its contents.
Well, they’ll have something to talk about now, won’t they? They’ll say it was all a part of the Cottoncrest curse. But they’ll never know the truth.
Hank took another long look at his house, leaned back in his lawn chair, and put the double barrels of his shotgun in his mouth. Stretching out his right hand, he pulled the trigger.
Today
The old man and the teenage girl were sitting on a bench in the herb garden. They hadn’t followed the rest of those who had traveled more than an hour by bus from New Orleans to tour the beautiful antebellum home that bordered the Mississippi River.
“Sit here a minute with me in the shade. There’s no need to go into the big house just yet. There’ll be plenty of time to tour Cottoncrest later this afternoon, before the bus leaves.
“As I was saying, the question is not how Jake Gold, your great-great-grandfather, got to be called the Cajun Jew. That’s the easy part. And the question is not how a boy who grew up in Russia speaking no En glish came to Louisiana and then ended up marrying New Yorker Roz Levison, who herself had come from Poland.
“I know you think you know the answers, but the answers you’ll give are the simple ones your parents told you—simple answers that sufficed when you were younger. But the simple answer is as dry as a week-old loaf of French bread.
“The real question is how did Grandpapa Jake get mixed up with the Cottoncrest curse? Now that you’re older than Jake was when he left Russia, you deserve to know his full story.”
PART I
1893
Chapter 1
The sun cut through the scraggly pine tree, its green needles pointing aimlessly in every direction. Not much shade here around the small cabins on the edge of the Cottoncrest plantation. Perhaps a thick cloud would pass by. No matter. Concentrate on business.
Jake turned the wheel of his grinding stone, pumping the levers at his feet, and reached down for another knife. “Mrs. Brady,” he said, “I can get these good and sharp, but sometime you ought to try a really fine-quality blade, one that won’t rust, one that will hold its edge without having to be sharpened every time I pass through.”
He spit on the whetstone and pumped harder, sparks flying as he painstakingly ground away, removing uneven sections that were barely visible, honing the edge of the dull metal to a gleaming point that, when he finished, would be fine enough to cut a strand of hair. That was the selling point. It always got their attention. He would politely ask the lady for a strand of her hair, and while she held it in her hand, dangling
in the wind, he would take the sharpened knife and slice it in half.
Of course, given the knives most of his customers had, they’d be dull again in a few weeks. But more and more of them were starting to buy the Freimer blades he sold. German made with exquisite precision, they held their fine-honed edge far longer than the knives the locals used.
Even after his customers bought a Freimer blade, they still would use their old knives. Yet when they saw how his retained a keen edge while their knives quickly dulled, they were all the more anxious for him to come around. To visit. To sharpen once again their old blades.
When he was sharpening, there was plenty of time to talk. And when there was time to talk, there was time to sell. Pans. Pots. Needles and thread. Rough loom fabric and pieces of fine lace. A few yards of French silk taffeta. Cotton silk printed to look like brocade. Less-expensive weaves with bouquets of bluebells, roses, and tulips scattered among pale stripes the color of spring leaves. Percale-weight toile with cherry-red wreaths and garlands. Even a few scraps of velvet and tapestry fabric, perfect for cuffs or collars. You had to ease into it, however. Let the customer ask. Don’t push. If you did it right, the customers sold themselves, and then they even thanked you.
Mona Brady worked the butter churn with slow, even motions. Her thin calico dress was damp with perspiration from her efforts. It was early October, and the first cold snap had not yet occurred, although the weather at this time of year could change abruptly.
Mona was worrying silently about all of her problems. Tee Ray and the kids were out in the fields, but the crop wasn’t going to yield much. They’d never get out of debt at the Cottoncrest store. Tee Ray and the kids wouldn’t be back until late, and then they’d be hungry. Got to get the butter ready, then shell the peas and make the cornbread. And the garden still had to be weeded.
“Oh, Mr. Gold, we can’t afford none of your fancy blades.”
Without looking up from his work, Jake responded, “I’m not trying to sell you a knife, Mrs. Brady. No, not at all. I just want you to try one. Hold one in your hand. Cut something with it. Of course, you need to save your money. These are tough times.”